Politicians' Social Media Balancing Act: Viral Moments vs. Substance

In the spring of 2015, a seventeen-year-old sixth-form student named Abby Tomlinson began photoshopping flower crowns onto the head of Ed Miliband, then leader of the Labour Party. She was not alone. A movement of young voters, mostly women, rallied behind the hashtag #Milifandom, flooding Twitter with romanticized images of the man they called "Milibae" in protest against what they saw as his distorted portrayal in the press. The hashtag trended. Labour lost the election anyway. David Cameron, whose Conservatives gained seats, offered a terse observation: "Britain and Twitter are not the same thing." Tomlinson later reflected that the experience had made her a "political pessimist," having learned that winning voters online "doesn't happen in a day, a week or even months, it's going to take years."

More than a decade later, Tomlinson is back in the game. She now sits in the press office at Number 12 Downing Street as head of content for Prime Minister Andy Burnham. The government has assembled a small army of producers, videographers, and digital strategists working from both Whitehall and a Manchester outpost at Number 10 North. In his first month in office, Burnham posted more than fifty times on Instagram alone—everything from formal meetings with world leaders to meme-based content ranking pub snacks alongside Chancellor John Healey as part of a business rates announcement. The calculation is deliberate: strategists believe Instagram and TikTok align with Burnham's natural communication style and his sense of humor.

He is far from alone in this pivot. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has released videos that have gone viral, tearing into government budgets and mocking her predecessors. Nigel Farage, leading Reform UK, commands the largest online following of any British party leader, with 7.6 million followers spread across Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube. The SNP in Scotland has long mobilized its online base for independence campaigning. Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats has engineered campaign stunts designed to spread across social platforms. Even smaller parties are playing the game: Plaid Cymru in Wales experiments with "fun" memes of its First Minister alongside serious interview clips. The Greens' Zack Polanski has chosen to run his own accounts—a choice that has recently cost him, after he accepted an Instagram collaboration featuring imagery that Reform UK characterized as incitement of violence against Farage.

The tension at the heart of this arms race is ancient, merely dressed in new clothes. Theresa May, Cameron's successor, famously resisted social media altogether, telling aides that "people don't say 'pass me the hashtag newspaper, or I'd like a hashtag coffee.'" Cabinet appointments were announced in formal press statements beneath the government coat of arms. By contrast, during Burnham's first ministerial reshuffle this summer, a two-person social media team positioned themselves with cameras to capture new arrivals as they entered Number 10. The shift reflects a broader technological evolution: just as Churchill harnessed radio and Harold Wilson modeled his television campaigning on JFK, today's politicians navigate podcasts for long-form conversation and social media for what one strategist calls "direct democratic dopamine."

Peter Hyman, who advised both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer, argues that Burnham's early digital success stems from "quantity as well as quality." A politician must "narrate the story of what you are doing three or four or five times a day so that you are out there regularly," Hyman says. "Keir Starmer wasn't out there enough and therefore it wasn't landing." Yet the causality remains murky: is Burnham more popular because he posts constantly, or is he posting constantly because he is already popular? The evidence is mixed. A TikTok video in which Burnham rated pub snacks attracted a million views. A straightforward video listing five accomplishments from his first week as Prime Minister drew five million. The gimmick did not outperform substance.

Not everyone is convinced the effort matters. Cody Dahler, a comedian with two million followers, warns that voters will grow cynical if they sense politicians treating social media merely as "a comms tool." Burnham, he suggested, comes across as a "cool substitute teacher." When Burnham released a video discussing regional names for bread rolls—barm, cob, bap—as part of a devolution announcement, broadcaster Piers Morgan told him to "stop wasting your time and ours with these cringe videos." Bea Timpson, a former press secretary to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, captures the bind: "I have to accept that it's now non-negotiable to be online a bit, but you definitely can be too much."

According to media watchdog Ofcom, television and news websites remain the primary sources for information, yet majorities across nearly every age group now access news through social media—78 percent of sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, and even 22 percent of those over seventy-five. For politicians, this is no longer about reaching the young; it is about reaching all voters. Yet the platforms matter differently. Facebook reaches four million combined followers across the main parties, far exceeding X's 3.2 million, yet Westminster insiders remain fixated on X because that is where journalists and spin doctors congregate. Emma Connolly, an academic at UCL's Digital Speech Lab, offers a sobering assessment: "We don't necessarily have really strong evidence or convincing evidence that it could really persuade or transform the opinion of opponent voters or even those that are undecided." The question looms: Can a prime minister TikTok his way through a war, a terror attack, or a controversial court case? Announcing a giveaway may go viral. The details of the cuts needed to pay for it almost certainly will not.